Americans are “under siege” from disinformation designed to confuse the public about the threat of climate change, Nasa’s former chief scientist has said.

Speaking to the Guardian, Ellen Stofan, who left the US space agency in December, said that a constant barrage of half-truths had left many Americans oblivious to the potentially dire consequences of continued carbon emissions, despite the science being unequivocal.

“We are under siege by fake information that’s being put forward by people who have a profit motive,” she said, citing oil and coal companies as culprits. “Fake news is so harmful because once people take on a concept it’s very hard to dislodge it.”

During the past six months, the US science community has woken up to this threat, according to Stofan, and responded by ratcheting up efforts to communicate with the public at the grassroots level as well as in the mainstream press.

“The harder part is this active disinformation campaign,” she said before her appearance at Cheltenham Science Festival this week. “I’m always wondering if these people honestly believe the nonsense they put forward. When they say ‘It could be volcanoes’ or ‘the climate always changes’… to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry.”

Stofan added that while “fake news” is frequently characterised as a problem in the right-leaning media, she saw evidence of an “erosion of people’s ability to scrutinise information” across the political spectrum. “All of us have a responsibility,” she said. “There’s this attitude of ‘I read it on the internet therefore it must be true’.”

Even using IPCC estimates, there is a real possibility we do not face a climate emergency. From IPCC AR5 Chapter 10 page 871;

… Estimates of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) based on multiple and partly independent lines of evidence from observed climate change indicate that there is high con dence that ECS is extremely unlikely to be less than 1°C and medium con dence that the ECS is likely to be between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C. These assessments are consistent with the overall assessment in Chapter 12, where the inclusion of additional lines of evidence increases con dence in the assessed likely range for ECS. …

Note this is the equilibrium sensitivity calculation – the transient climate sensitivity is likely to be even less.

Since we have already experienced around 1C of temperature rise without any noticeable ill effects, an additional 0.8C by the year 2100 is a big nothing burger.

Obviously everyone can debate the likelihood of various climate sensitivity estimates, or the possibility that the rise in atmospheric CO2 level will accelerate as China complies with their Paris agreement commitments, by building hundreds of new coal plants, but my point stands;

The science is NOT unequivocal that we face a climate emergency. Using the IPCC’s own climate figures, there is a real possibility anthropogenic CO2 is not a big deal.

Calling people who point this out purveyors of “fake news” is pure climate alarmism.

As for what happens after the year 2100, frankly that is their problem. By the year 2100 humanity will know whether CO2 is causing climate problems – and will have the energy supply options and advanced engineering capabilities to deal with any eventuality.

The renewables industry in the UK is full of serial liars and people who spread fake news. The profit in the renewables industry is massive due to the huge subsidies they receive. They are prepared to say anything to keep the gravy train going.

The renewables industry is just making money with the tax breaks and incentives put in place for that purpose. They are NOT to blame. So who is standing to make money … ?

$100bn / year EVERY YEAR? That is not the oil or coal industries it is the UN Green slush fund. So it is the UN and World Bank who are going to be gaining massive donations of free money with which they will buy influence and dictate policy.

“We are under siege by fake information that’s being put forward by people who have a profit motive,” she said,

She is right. and who stands to make the most from the alarmist disinformaiton : follow the money.

“I’m always wondering if these people honestly believe the nonsense they put forward. When they say ‘It could be volcanoes’ or ‘the climate always changes’… to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry.”

Frankly she makes me angry by pretending that anyone who does not jump on the AGW alarmist bandwagon is on the payroll of oil and coal industries and by lying about the science being “unequivocal” .

But it is interesting that she picked up on my article about the possible warming effect of major volcanoes. It proves that climate sceptic blogs are getting the message across.

The group with the greatest profit motive in fake news is wealthy green charitable NGOs like the Sierra club, etc. Continuing tales of climate alarmism has greatly boosted the donations and paid memberships they receive. “You Can Save The World”—that is a powerful recruiting message.

The Guardian will print anything–literally ANYTHING that furthers the leftist agenda. They’d say the sky was purple and the grass black with equal conviction. Just like the NYT these days, you have to consider the source. And sounds like Ms. NASA is pissed that her snout will soon be out of the trough! One of the biggest ongoing howlers of course is that skeptics are all profit-motivated, but alarmists operate out of pure, unalloyed altruism. NOTHING could be further from the truth!

Isn’t it amazing how so many “real” scientists and their followers are sooo concerned about the people who will be inhabiting the planet 100 years from now, but won’t lift a finger to ease the plight of thousands of innocent refugees fleeing the war torn Middle East. There the same hypocrites to fly by the thousands to endless climate change conferences, leaving a trail of CO2 behind them when they could just as easily use teleconferencing. It’s all so pathetic. I just hope a few “real” scientists, especially Ms. Stofan read this.

Trebla, it’s like nobody has heard of “video conferencing” or “webcasting”, right? I mean why would a true alarmist believer do that, when they could leave a carbon footprint a mile long instead? Oh…wait…

The scientific answer Greg, Is that this poor wretch of a woman is suffering from a severe mental disorder caused by massive cognitive dissonance, which causes her to attribute to others the exact set of behaviors and attitude and misapprehensions that she herself is deep in the sway of.
Every single sentence and word she speaks on the subject. is in fact what she and her fellow warmistas are doing, thinking, and saying.
To the letter.
It is very strange if she is unaware of this…because the people she works with are the ones actively corrupting data sets, selectively editing and censoring both historical information and new research, baffling the public with BS doublespeak on any and every issue with any relation to the weather or climate of the Earth whatsoever, and on and on. In fact, she may very well be one of the data corrupters and/ or fake news editors and/or professional bullshit artists herself.
Nothing unusual or unprecedented has happened or is happening, everything which has ever been written or known about the climate history of our civilization and the Earth has been rewritten, erased, disappeared, or covered up…including the very graphs, maps, arguments and findings of the first IPCC reports which showed no net warming had occurred as of the late 1990s, and the 1930s was the hottest decade by far and several decades of sharp cooling had occurred since then.
To ignore all that has been altered, lied about, obfuscated and just plain gotten wrong must take either a massive brain tumor, or a mental state that causes bewildering hallucinations to form spontaneously inside one’s psyche and be transferred into the conscious self, in order to avoid the ego-crushing realities that one’s entire life is based on telling ridiculous untruths, and she is truly as clueless as a box of rocks about the very subjects that give her ego any sense of self-worth at all.
Either that or she is a deliberate and willful purveyor of a confabulation of junk science, scare mongering, and money-grubbing, self-enriching speculations…no more than a shameless head-bobber to the whims of her political paymasters.

To go into the specifics in any sort of comprehensive manner is now a compendium of wrongness that would fill a very thick book if described in detail. Global ice cyclicality, the lie of sea level rise acceleration, conflating weather events with climate change, the utter failure of GCMs, sweeping the benefits of higher CO2 under the rug, made up nonsense about the non-thing dubbed ocean acidification, concealing and/or ignoring the true aims of the UN and the IPCC, the international wealth transference schemes that masquerade as an environmental cause, the whole notion that humans can adjust the future temperature of the planet like one adjusts a wall thermostat, ignoring the scientific method entirely on any subject tangentially related to climate or even weather…
Maybe instead of naming hurricanes after the President and his family, we could name methods of reviving the unconscious, or slapping a person out of a stupor, after people such as Ellen Stofan and Jeffrey Sachs, and all the rest of the lickspittle climate sycophants and jackbooted panic whores.

“Big Oil” are energy companies, if/when the oil dries up or legislation mandates, do environmentalist think these multi-billion dollar companies are just going to shrug their shoulders, say “we had a good innings” and close the doors.

Exxon has said it stopped funding climate-skeptic think tanks a decade ago. Probably most other Big Oil companies are now non-funders too. As for lobbying, it and other oil companies are on board with the carbon tax idea and have protested Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord.

On some level ALL leftists’ ultimate “problem” is with capitalism. My own theory is that their kindergarten teachers told them the world is supposed to be “fair” and “even-steven,” and they still believe it subconsciously. My answer is, if you don’t like capitalism, turn all your interest, dividends, and capital gains over to the government; now you can feel like a righteous Socialist.

“Big Oil” are energy companies, if/when the oil dries up or legislation mandates, do environmentalist think these multi-billion dollar companies are just going to shrug their shoulders, say “we had a good innings” and close the doors.

One better hope not. These big energy companies are massive tax payers and without those tax revenues, everyone will be far poorer, particularly those on modest to low income who rely upon government/welfare handouts.

The socialists always want to spend other people’s money, but when this dries up and the tax dollars are no longer received from the big energy corporations, the socialist will be the first squeal at the ensuing austerity that they will be forced to endue..

I thought it was classic when the head of Goldman Sachs game out denouncing Trump’s Paris exit.
Hmmm.. first thought, GS had a lot of money bet on the implications. If you don’t think GS is motivated by profit (aka “greed”), you aren’t thinking it through. The fact they came out against Trump tell us all we need to know – Paris is all about selecting winners to make money, not about saving the world from climate change.

The people have awakened to the fact that experts aren’t credible. That’s why they have tuned out on climate alarmism.

It isn’t necessary to have some evil covert well funded propaganda campaign to prejudice the people against CAGW religion. It’s actually an own goal.

Folks are noticing that science is in trouble. In some fields, Eroom’s Law has set in. New breakthroughs aren’t coming, science is stagnant in those fields. “Sloppy science creates worthless cures, crushes hope, and wastes billions.” link

The constant parade of contradictory studies has become a joke. Any scientist who still thinks science still has any of its former credibility is living in cloud cuckoo land.

I do not think she is an idiot,. She is probably not blind. She is however obliged to support the status quo. ANSA has dug itself in so deep they have no way out. They have claimed, without evidence, that Svensmark is wrong, cannot be right, and it is all about CO2. Yet Svensmark is so right, there is nearly no room left for human effects.

How embarrassing for a Nationals Space Administration! Of all the organisations that should be leading the enquiry into the effects of extra-terrestrial phenomena on the climate, NASA should be leading. Instead, we get this silly droning about how it is almost all due to man’s evil ways, and that the Garden Of Pre-Industrial Eden is being wrought into wasteland.

‘Science’ is not in trouble, climate science is. Science is a tool box. NASA climate science is the misapplication of those tools. It is not even complicated. As the tree line inches north to where it was a few centuries ago, we should be rejoicing as the forest regrows and the tundra is transformed. What do we get instead? Howling about ‘methane’ from old biomass stored in the permafrost! Excuse me….biomass?? And how it is get there? Did the Flying Spaghetti Monster put it there to confuse the skeptics?

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. CAGW is not science as anyone normal person understands it.

[ANSA ? But, perhaps an NSA may, somewhen and somehow, be able to recover NASA’s original files and purpose. .mod]

Good question: why the silence. I believe (having seen the inside a bit for a decade) that the main reason is the unique way that the university system (thus professoriat) works. Universities are not like corporations, however many assertions there are about them working like greedy businesses blah blah. They are much more like a collection of little kingdoms with a host of little vassal kings working under the protection of a Bog Brother that functions somewhat like an Athenian ruling council. Lots of rules to be exploited.

A professor has a great deal of latitude to teach what he wants and to protect his narrow topic (usually) and there is a social contract between them – if you challenge the core of my being (his PhD) I will resist to the death. They have invented ‘tenure’ as a way to protect their space to allow them to say what they want and take a whole lifetime to work out the details.

This, when connected to the funding available from private corporations, is a recipe for disasters, a series of them. It is very similar, structurally, to the organisation of Islam, where there is no official priesthood, but a series of mullah each of which has convinced a group or followers that he sees the divine light in just the right manner. They receive money for this, from the followers in the case of Islam. In the case of universities, it is collected by the ‘collective’ and shared according to rules.

The term ‘climate mullah’ is quite appropriate – probably more appropriate than most realise as few know how mullahs actually become influential. For an American or Nigerian parallel, a TV preacher would perhaps be the parallel. If you stick to certain formulae, you can pretty much say what you want.

The greater science community, if it is professional, knows what they know and knows what they do not know, and they keep quiet about things in which they have little expertise. Climate science is filled with people working far their specialities and understanding. Climate science’s ridiculous and unsupportable claims rarely come from people who are experts at the narrow topic encompassed by the blame-point.

So there is a built-in resistance to alarmist claims made by other scientists where the work in question is not the area of speciality of the listener. And that is long before we get to the points about ridiculous connections of cause and effect which are too numerous to mention. A real prof knows that making idiotic and, in the end, disproven claims, will be career suicide. I know many who are just watching the alarmists throw themselves onto the pickets, hurling themselves over the ramparts, with no chance of surviving the inevitable undoing that will surely follow. Climate madness is an industry suffused with ego. It is the leaven that holds it together. People have dug themselves in so deep there is not way back, having chained their careers to the mast of a sinking ship.

The greatest risk is from Svensmark. He and his team really do deserve the Nobel Prize. His theory and proofs are excruciatingly detailed and predictive. The excursion of the jet stream that is bringing snow to California right now can be traced to large scale atmospheric effects of solar influence. A piece of the puzzle is provided by Prof Lu of the Univ of Waterloo with his work on ozone and GRC’s.

As the crops start to fail in China and Pakistan, Argentina and Canada in the coming cold, the mullahs of warming will be trampled by the mobs rushing to acclaim the mullahs of cold. Humanity just loves a good horror story.

Are all NASA leaders competent and unbiased in determining if CO2 increase temperatures or if increasing temperatures cause increased CO2 concentrations?
If only those who support catastrophic increases in temperature from increases in CO2 concentration receive support from the Green Blob, then who has the profit motive, who is responsible for fake news?

We are on track for 0 (F or C, take your pick) over the first 20 years of the 21st century. Somebody send her a calculator with zero X already entered and a note telling her to try any extension of the trend she likes.

Technically that quote is correct. The election was held on Nov 8th, but the Electoral college met an cast their votes on Dec 19th and those votes were certified by the House of Rep on January 6 2017. So the election was not official until Jan 6th.

There were millions “hoping” to turn aside the election (by lies and news media pressure) in the Electoral College on Dec 19-20.
We were fortunate that they (Both the American voters and the Electoral College representatives those voters selected) actually voted as the law required. Not as the mass media desired.

Outside the Left’s marshmallow cloud and unicorn ranch filled fantasies, there was no chance the electoral college would vote for anything other than the Nov. 8 results or that the Reps would certify anything other than the electoral college results. That’s a tool of fake news purveyors…technically it COULD happen, but in reality there’s not a chance in hell.

Very senior people, like chief scientists, don’t put in their resignations just prior to leaving. She had probably tendered her resignation in September or October, to allow her boss to find a replacement before she left.

“showed her capability as an international scientist even as a student by visiting the Soviet Union as part of the Brown University-Vernadsky Institute cooperative agreement,”
said James W. Head, Stofan’s Ph.D. adviser.
“She co-authored a paper on the newly discovered enigmatic corona features on Venus with Alex Pronin of the Vernadsky Institute.

Her success led to her immediate leadership position as deputy project scientist in the NASA Magellan mission to Venus, an unprecedented global mission to map the planet.” Stofan is the second Brown Ph.D. to hold the top science post at NASA after James Garvin.”

And there is another mystery!
A graduate student leaps from doctorate thesis success to s deputy position at NASA.

A classic case of projection , there indeed a lot of fake news on ‘climate doom’ and to much pushed by NASA itself in the name of ‘the cause ‘ by people like Stofan .
Bottom line it is another call for ‘deniers’ to be silenced something never needed when the science is really ‘settled ‘ .

According to Wiki she is a geologist – her Dad was a NASA rocket scientist – anybody get a whiff of nepotism here? IF CO2 is guilty of the massive thermal effect attributed to it competent physicists could demonstrate it in the lab. She frankly is not qualified to speak since as a geologist she seems oblivious to the geological record which shows no correlation between CO2 and temperature. She certainly has no physics to form her OPINIONS.

So here we are faced with a real ‘Scientist’ who actually studied Venus as a planetary system (see her wiki) who buys into the ‘Venus had Beaches’ argument without noting that,, , if so the Earth, due to relative solar proximity, would have been a frozen ball of ice at the same time. Perhaps she buys into the rcp8.5 sensitivity?

Since I can’t actually do the math, just visualize it, I have no answer. Except to note that not all scientists, along with doctors and lawyers, are actually competent in their fields. Some are good test takers.

She should take Stephen Hawking along and fulfill his prediction that we must find another planet “within 100 years”.

I worked outside all yesterday on the yard, the pasture, and our orchard and between the gentle breeze, spectacular sunsets, and amazing plethora of biological activity and balance, Mr. Hawking can have Venus.

I’m very satisfied with Earth and convinced a better planet can’t be found.

So here we are faced with a real ‘Scientist’ who actually studied Venus as a planetary system (see her wiki) who buys into the ‘Venus had Beaches’ argument without noting that,, , if so the Earth, due to relative solar proximity, would have been a frozen ball of ice at the same time.

I often make a similar point with respect to Mars and the problem with the so called weak sun parody. Whilst no one knows when Mars lost its atmosphere; it is thought that most of it had been lost about 3.5 billion years ago, so this gives very little time for running water on the planet. The window of opportunity for running water lies say sometime between the period 3 to 4 billion years ago. IF in the early period of the solar system, there was a weak sun as proposed, then Mars would not have had an opportunity to have had running water over much of its surface. Either our time lines are wrong, or the sun was not as weak as people suggest.

I have no hope for Mars being a viable planet for more than a scientific presence with the people being rotated back to Earth on a regular basis. There is a zero chance of having another viable planet in the next hundred years. Without Star Trek technology we are stuck here forever.

If you study the political history of the Scablands in Washington State you will see everything that is wrong with scientific consensus and how easily butt-hurt published but wrong scientists are. It was the invention of the epiphany that gave scientists the necessary tool to come through the wall of righteous ignorance with their careers intact.

We pretty much already have the capability to decarbonise the economy, using nuclear power. France decarbonised their electricity system in the 1970s. The rest of the developed world could do the same.

2100 might bring other options such as viable, inexpensive nuclear fusion – but viable fusion power isn’t necessary for what I say to be true. One thing for sure is our engineering capabilities will be far more advanced by 2100.

You are apparently not up to snuff on nuclear technology. The clear emerging revolution is all about molten salt reactors (China, India, Moltex Energy, Transatomic Power, Terrestrial Energy, etc) – producing power cheaper than any other technology, constructed in factories and ready to roll in months, not years. Totally safe. Or the likely further sharp reduction in lithium battery prices due to mass production/cheaper(and superior) cathodes and anodes. Prices are already sub-$200 per KWhr. When they go below $100 , the gasoline powered personal vehicle era is over.

NASA has no intention in their report on climate?
Starting Arctic’s report on 1979-the year with the most ice coverage.
Showing water levels from two different measures where one, gouges show less, and one shows more and cuts the linear trends and propose there is a change!
I would be shamed if I where employee.

You wouldn’t last a year as an employee. Honest people find it difficult to work for such institutions. I lasted just over a year working for government, and walked out on Friday without giving notice and never came back. I could not watch the incompetence, the waste of money, etc anymore. No one cared about doing things right, only who had the most seniority and who was greasing whose palm. It was intolerable. That’s why such agencies are a mess—good people just can’t work there.

Sheri, one of the major problems with government bureaucracies is that once Congress starts screwing with their budgets the competent people move elsewhere. That leaves the mediocre to take the promotions and eventually run the place. From a book that came out in the ’60s or early ’70s (i.e., The Entrepreneur’s Handbook if I remember correctly): “First rate managers hire first rate people. Second rate managers hire third rate people.” I’m afraid that holds equally for both government and business. Sounds like you got out just in time to protect your sanity.

I bet “Mankind causes apocalypse due to non-compliance with the left-leaning seance civil servants preferences”TM-message is even tougher to peddle from outside. Perhaps Grauniad can offer some carbonless tissue to wipe the sweat off.

Stofan added that while “fake news” is frequently characterised as a problem in the right-leaning media, she saw evidence of an “erosion of people’s ability to scrutinise information” across the political spectrum.

The consensus is scattering even in the left-leaning spectrum? Roger that. Count me in. Time kick in a new gear.

Please clue me in, …… is the person with the “screenname” of Reasonable Skeptic ….. a reasonable thinking person who is a self-proclaimed Skeptic about the claims of AGW or CAGW, ……. or is that person a self-proclaimed Skeptic about the claims of AGW or CAGW who considers himself/herself a reasonable thinking person?

So I guess my next question is, …….. which half part of his/her “screenname” is the “truth” part ……. and which is the fictitious, lying or “half-truth” part?

“Those with a profit view” ??! Please, no, not those words coming from a climate scientist… I stopped reading there. Because this all alone is enough to consider her whole hate speech as completely unfounded.

Looking at the text under the image. Close encounter with a planetary mind like Stofan’s may have resolved one of the greatest puzzles ever since the Council of Nicea or even before: the firmament is neither solid nor liquid. It’s amorphous like in a greenhouse.

… Estimates of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) based on multiple and partly independent lines of evidence from observed climate change indicate that there is high con dence that ECS is extremely unlikely to be less than 1°C and medium con dence that the ECS is likely to be between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C. These assessments are consistent with the overall assessment in Chapter 12, where the inclusion of additional lines of evidence increasescon dence in the assessed likely range for ECS. …

Is it just my browser, or is some computer gremlin converting “fi” to ” ” in your block quote above?

The sheer short sightedness of the climate alarmists is astounding. Does this woman really believe that 50 years from now (or even 20 years from now) we will still be driving gas powerd cars? Or using anything other than molten salt nuclear reactors to make power, cheaper than any other energy technology? Ms Steffan is obviously out of touch with emerging technologies We are well aware of the large number of folks who make a living spreading climate catastrophic scenarios, but who exactly is “profitting” by denying the notion of a climate armegeddon? It is embarrassing to think that this simple-minded purveyor of future catastrophic climate events ever held such a high position in our govt. Exactly which credentials does she have to buttress her opinions about future climates? A degree in astronomy?

“ Exactly which credentials does she have to buttress her opinions about future climates?”

Iffen I were to venture a guess, …… then I would hafta say, ….. first and foremost, she is a good looking, attractive, well proportioned “blonde” …… and secondly, her daddy was/is a high ranking NASA employee with apparently a lot of friends in “important” positions of NASA management.

Samuel Cogar, her credential is the revolving door. She left NASA for employment at a job for a tiny research firm that appeared to exist only through government contracts. Then that revolving door butted her right back into government employment during the second reign of Obama the Maggotificent.

Whether out of ignorance or deceit, it’s always a turn off for me when a scientists uses the term “carbon emissions” when in actuality what they are talking about is carbon dioxide. Sure, we can speak of the carbon cycle and the interchange of carbon between the various sources and sinks, but carbon dioxide, not “carbon” is the combustion emission being discussed.

Didn’t the IPCC have a paragraph in one of their earlier presentations that stated that the warming noted could be broken down between natural and man made in the following portions: .25 degree C was natural warming prior to 1945, .25 degree natural warming after 1945 and the remaining .3 degree C was man made. Use that warming (.3 degree C) in your calculation and you really get a nothing burger out to the year 2100..

Also, I think your equation should use natural logs, not base 10 logs. Still doesn’t change the answer much.

“ Also, I think your equation should use natural logs, not base 10 logs. Still doesn’t change the answer much.”

It matters not a twit …… iffen one uses natural logs, ….. unnatural logs, ….. artificial logs ….. or just any ole timber log, …….. simply because, ….. whenever one is touting the “junk science” claim stating that ….. the rate of increase in near-surface air temperatures will begin decreasing as a result of an increase in atmospheric CO2 because the “CO2 (temperature increase) forcing is logarithmic” …… is little more than a “blue sky dream” that was concocted up by the partisan “warminists”.

Me thinks the above claim is akin to claiming that …….. “The more sugar you put in your cup of coffee …… the more sour your coffee will taste“.

I thought Samuel Cogar was going to make the point that it doesn’t matter what log base you use because mathematically the results would be the same. The “K” factor using log base 10 vs natural log would be different, but would be exactly balanced out by the ratio of ln2/(log base 10 of 2). All log scales are equivalent. The “natural” log comes up because the Natural log of 1 + x approaches x as x gets smaller and smaller, approaching zero. For instance, the natural log of 1.001 is 0.0009995, pretty close to 0.001., only off by 0.05%.
The based 10 log of 1 + x approaches x/(2.20358+), which is a lot messier than just “x”.

You all should be using this “Log Scale” (see below) for calculating the warming effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 because I am positive your measured calculations will be just as accurate as they will be iffen you use “base 10 logs” or whatever.

1)Moreover, fossil fuels will be peaking before mid century and becoming more expensive, more of it will be going into petrochemicals and fertilizers and we WILL be getting more power from the atom. This is a no brainer.
2) CO2 emissions will accordingly flatten with increased use of natural gas for power and transportation.
3)We are on a downslope overall to the next glacial period, so if warming has more strength than it has shown so far, it will be bucking orbital forcing.
4) We’ll be testing the sun’s influence, too. Perhaps we should keep an eye on Mars Ice cap going forward. No one, even sceptics, mention the Nasa and Pulkovo Observatory (Russia) observation that both planet’s ice caps shrunk at the same time. WUWT?
5) The next 10yrs following this past El Nino will pretty well give even the IPCC a much lower upper bound on ECS. The temperature crunchers are likely to be constrained in their fiddling with Trump in the WH and if a cooldown persists, that will be the end of it.
6) If the greening/plankton expansion and crop yields continue to advance, the net cost benefit will be pushed evermore into the expanding benefit side of the ledger – enhanced land and ocean habitat will be good for mankind and beast, beasties, and the plant kingdom.

Using a “reasonable” estimate of remaining fossil fuel resources, it’s hard to see CO2 rising above 630 ppm. This of course assumes fossil fuel prices increase and new technologies are developed to replace them over the next 100 years.

“…the potentially dire consequences of continued carbon emissions, despite the science being unequivocal.”

The is no evidence. Period. These people actually believe that model outputs and consensus are scientific evidence. I actually read on a website that the consensus of 97% of scientists is evidence that CAGW is real.

If there really were Big Money behind climate skepticism there’d be one professionally produced skeptical video per year, and it would be free (on YouTube) or obtainable at very low cost (if a DVD or film). IOW, there’d be 30 of them by now, and some of them would focus in detail on specific aspects of the issue, particularly the weakest points in the warmists’ case. Instead, skeptical productions have mostly been sporadic, amateurish, and unfocused. Maybe five exist that cost something substantial to create.

And who can remember seeing a contrarian billboard, or a TV or radio spot, or a print ad? Those have been nearly nonexistent. If Big Money were backing skepticism, there’d be a ton of such missives.

There is a real advantage, however, to not being well-funded and organized: It’s tougher to target the skepticism. I have noticed as certain bloggers become more well-known, they are the targets of warmists blogs. Meanswhile, the “lesser” bloggers have smaller audiences, but blog away without any opposition. Small groups and individuals are actually more difficult to counter. This does not mean that your writings about skeptics not being well-funded are not accurate, I’m just saying there advantages to being not-well-funded.

@Sheri: As one of the self funded tiny accidental bloggers on this niche, mixed with other of life’s interesting stuff, I agree with you. Looking at my site’s Google Analytics over time, it’s pretty apparent that the MSM are losing their grip on the “we’re all gonna die” story. The redistribution of the mistrust is spreading world wide. The Social Media revolution has initially produced the Lowest Common Denominator of IQ stampeding across the planet, but it is also capable of cutting both ways. Just not yet. Patience.

I have yet to benefit in any way from not buying into the CAGW scam. However, hundreds of thousands of people are documented as having received grants to “study” CAGW, being hired to lobby about CAGW, using public funds to “study”, lobby, or promote CAGW, etc., and attending lavish conferences in destination-vacation hotspots. Publicly questioning any aspect of CAGW has the potential to destroy one’s career, but making patently absurd claims about CAGW’s “potential effects” does not seem to have any negative effect. Algore has made millions because he tells lies about climate, weather, and the environment. Find the most prominent skeptic in the world, compare their income to Algore. Look at the ten best-known academics who are publicly skeptical of CAGW. Look at the ten best-known academics whose careers are based on promoting CAGW as true. Compare their finances and professional standing over time. Which stance has been more beneficial over time?

If I was looking to make some money, I picked the wrong side. If there really is funding for skepticism, please direct me to the source.

Budget cuts don’t have to be justified. The massive and out of control SPENDING is what has to be continually justified, and that is precisely what leftist MSM does. Slashing spending, followed by slashing fraud and unaccountable foreign aid, then a thorough investigation and prosecution of the guilty parties in USG. These are the actions Americans have to force on government.

My response when this comes up: “OBVIOUSLY, THE SCIENCE IS NOT CONVINCING”. Come on, no one has a disinformation campaign and is winning on convincing science. It only works if the science is flawed. You can’t exploit hard and fast facts. It’s in the realm of “How to lie with statistics” we see this happen. Her statement is an bold admission that the science is flawed.

No one has launched a successful campaign to prove aliens have landed or any other such idea. That stays in the “off the wall” catagory. Yet global warming is questioned by even the best and brightest in the field. It’s the FLAWED SCIENCE, not the money, not the oil companies (who all profit from global warming through renewable subsidies they use for oil exploration, building back up plants, etc), just really flawed science.

Lastly, women are sooooooo annoying. Mostly I vote to keep women out of STEM—especially whiney ones that emote instead of think. Actually, the same thing goes for whiney males. (Thinking women are not under this umbrella—— There are just so few ever seen in news stories, etc.)

“Already experienced around 1 degree C temperature rise” means you are assigning all of that rise to permanent climate effect and none to cycles like AMO that are either poorly understood or ignored or averaged now.

“ “Already experienced around 1 degree C temperature rise” means you are assigning all of that rise to permanent climate effect and none to …… ”

Actually, me absolutely positive that it means that the avid proponents of CAGW have highjacked all of the Interglacial Warming from 1880 to present ….. and have been blaming it on anthropogenic warming.

Assuming that the IPCC is correct in that wattage is proportional to the logarithm of the amount of CO2 in the air
ln (400/280) = 0.3567. The ln of (560/280) is 0.6931 so we’re already .3567/.6931 so we’re already at 51.5% of a doubling of CO2 with no harmful effects.

I wish you wouldn’t use or quote the word “experienced”. In those terms the only thing I’ve experienced over the past decade is cooling. Of course it could be that the area I’m in has detached itself from the world climate system, but somehow I doubt that.

When they say ‘It could be volcanoes’ or ‘the climate always changes’… to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry.”

She’s referring to the claim of a few contrarians that undersea volcanoes release a lot of CO2. But that’s a rare claim (mostly promoted by Monckton, IIRC). It might be something that the mainstream hasn’t accounted for. She’s cherry-picking by suggesting that this is a common contrarian claim.

Her omission of “undersea” qualifies as a half-truth, perhaps a deliberate one. I.e., she may be counting on her audience reacting thusly: “Those ignorant skeptics! Don’t they know that volcanoes cool the atmosphere?!”

“ Her omission of “undersea” qualifies as a half-truth, perhaps a deliberate one. I.e., she may be counting on her audience reacting thusly: “Those ignorant skeptics! Don’t they know that volcanoes cool the atmosphere?!””

Oh, wow, ….. so that is why the tropical temperatures of the Hawaiian Islands have been drastically “cooling” during the past 34 years, to wit:

Land-based volcanoes that erupt explosively enough to shoot SO2 into the stratosphere, unlike those whose eruptions merely ooze like the basalt-types in Hawaii, are the only ones that cool the global atmosphere. This is so well-known here that I didn’t think I needed to mention it.

Roger, I was NOT belittling you or your comment, …… but on the contrary, ….. I was criticizing the author of your quoted comment …. wherein you claimed she stated ….. “Those ignorant skeptics! Don’t they know that volcanoes cool the atmosphere?!”

Well “DUH”, …… Roger, …… just how much thermal (heat) energy has been emitted into the atmosphere as a result of ….. 34 continuous years of 24/7 “oozing” of 700 to 1,200 °C (1,292 to 2,192 °F) volcanic lava, …. which as of December 2012, the eruption had produced 4 km3 (1 cu mi) of lava, covered 125 km2 (48 sq mi) of land, added 202 ha (499 acres) of land to the island, destroyed 214 structures, and buried 14.3 km (9 mi) of highway under lava as thick as 35 m (115 ft).

And has the CO2 emissions outgassed by Kilauea during said 34 years caused more “cooling of the atmosphere” ……. than the 34 years of outflow of “hot” lava has caused “heating of the atmosphere”?

She is a Geologist:
Stofan holds master and doctorate degrees in geological sciences from Brown University in Providence, R.I., and a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ocs/stofan_bio.html

This NASA “scientist” must be completely ignorant of the geological record of the earth. This “scientist” denies 600 million years of history.

If she was speaking as a scientist, perhaps she should have provided some science and not just her opinion. The quotes in this post don’t suggest she did anything but repeat the CAGW mantra without any evidence to support the theory.

ECS is defined as the new eventual equilibrium from a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Essay Sensitive Uncertainty goes into details and provides a number of ways to estimate it without using climate models. Likely 1.6-1.7.

‘During the past six months, the US science community has woken up to this threat, according to Stofan, and responded by ratcheting up efforts to communicate with the public at the grassroots level as well as in the mainstream press.’

Where the heck was she up to six months ago? The ‘US science community’ has been fighting skeptics for over a generation.

‘she said, citing oil and coal companies as culprits.’

Jeeeze, not this again. We’ve been waiting for over a decade for our checks!

I wonder how they come at these positive effects to temp with increased CO2?

CO2 is a wonderful fire extinguisher but that has all to do with its inflammability and its high energy consumption to go from solid/liquid to gas phase, both IRRELEVANT to warming.

A gas cannot contain much heat you need bigger oscillating artefacts for that mixed in the atmosphere: Water forms droplets and ice crystals, these are huge artefacts allowing to store heat.

CO2 molecule just excites, then releases all its energy again. it can hold up a photon but only for an infinitesimal time duration, and eventually the photon leaves with its energy , just like when there would be no CO2 molecule aroound..hmmmm??

The computation of radiative equilibrium for any arbitrary source and object spectra is rather simple if one even knows what a dot product is . But that leaves out the great majority of the “climate science” community who apparently never had a competent course in heat transfer .

Gravity is left out of the computations but is the only explanation for why the bottoms of atmosphere are hotter than their tops . Even light blue shifts , ie : heats , as it descends into a gravitational well . From there it is only a matter of working out the equations to calculate the temperature profile for any matter in a gravitational field including atmospheres . Venus’s surface is hot because of the weight of its atmosphere , not its spectrum .

But NASA has pages full of disinformation based on the GHG nonscience .

waterside4,
I assumed that “con dence” was supposed to be “confidence”. It may be a typo’ committed by Eric. If not, then there should be a “[sic] placed behind the occurrences of the word pairs to put the onus on the Guardian.

Having done her part to destroy NASA’s public image, this former “civil servant” now seeks another trough to feast at.
More evidence of that new ethical standard,crippling civilization, “Good Enough For Government”.
GEFG the UN and civil service highest standard.
Has anyone on the “Concerned” side off things , told these fools how revealing their projection is?

BC,
I don’t doubt that she believes what she is saying. That is one of the problems. She and those like her are so convinced that they are right that the only thing that explains (to her) the actions of those of us here is that we are being paid big bucks to confuse the public. She has made a mental model of the world where she is in possession of the Ultimate Truth and those working against her do so out of simple greed. The bottom line is that she is ‘reality challenged,’ and isn’t even aware of it. These are people who have closed minds and don’t really understand how the Scientific Method works.

It just fries me how many of these useless “Dr. Bureaucrat” types are employed by the US federal gov’t either as full-time employees or as highly paid “consultants”. You could cut the budgets of many federal agencies such as the EPA and NOAA by 75% and you wouldn’t see any change in their deliverable. It’s that bad: literal armies of people that don’t do anything of value unless of course you count their virtue signalling.

Yeah, exactly, Tim. She won’t be publicly debating her quack, fake, utterly ridiculous clams of CO2 warming air because she knows there’s no defending it except through using hordes of ignoratti class diptards who are sure that ”if the laws of physics wanted their side stated, they should have had a lawyer of their own.”

I was wondering about this also. Stofan says Venus is hot (500C) because the atmosphere has a high content of CO2. But there’s no mention of Mars, where the mean surface temperature is -63C.
Venus atmosphere 96.5% CO2.
Mars atmosphere 95.8% CO2.
What conclusion can one draw from these observations?

Also atmopsheric pressure. On Venus, atmospheric pressure is about 90 times that of earth. Since surface gravity on Venus is about 0.9 times that of earh, Venus’s atmosphere is 100 times as thick as ours,
Venus also has sulfur dioxide clouds, which also have some effect on surface temperature.

Mars’ atmosphere is only 0.6% that of earth, and its gravity is about 35% that of earth. Mars has about 0.006/0.35 0r 1.7% as thick an atmosphere as earth.

Usually I agree with you Anthony…. but here I disagree. From those % numbers you CAN conclude that it is NOT the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere that is important. There is NO correlation at all with percentage and even you agree with that. It is other differences that account for the temperature differences between the worlds. On earth, one always hears from the CAGW types… that we MUST keep earth atmosphere below “X” percentage or the earth will become uninhabitable by any intelligent life forms.

She points out that Venus, which is now 900 degrees at the surface, used to have an ocean. “Do we really want to mess with the planet when the stakes are so high?” she says.
But she’s an optimist, and a scientist. So she thinks of Venus as less a cautionary tale than a helpful data set. “It really sets climate change déniers back for a minute when they realize we’ve studied this happening on multiple planets,” Stofan says.

Her misanthropogenic accusations and fears are absurd in astonishingly many ways. For Earth to turn into Venus, mankind would need to multiply Earth’s atmospheric pressure. How exactly would mankind cause it here? No need to even mention the Venusian atmosphere is dry according to NASA. And what other planets is she talking about?

As far as I know the worst storms rage in one of the coldest planets in the solar system, Neptune, with an atmosphere made of the worst greenhouse gas there is, methane. WUWT?

I tried playing with that equation and could come to no conclusion one way or the other. Add additional gas and you get additional Pressure. Does Volume also go up, does atmosphere expand? Who knows?
The n should exactly balance the P increae, R stays constant, if V also goes up, T goes up, If Volume goes down with extra pressure, T also goes down.

You’re making a mistake to assume that P or V are constant. Expansion is a cooling process. Assuming that the temperature is rising, then the upper boundary of the atmosphere should expand. This will reduce the temperature increase to a new (higher) equilibrium.

Of course, melting and evaporation are also both cooling processes. There does not need to be a temperature change to absorb increased energy.

Remember Skylab? It crashed from orbital decay before NASA could rescue it due to (as NASA claimed at the time) drag from an expanded atmosphere from unusually hot weather in the early 70’s. Seems to me that by now both NASA and the Air Force (and the Russians) should have reams of data on the density of the ionosphere at LEO altitudes going back to at least the late 60’s and that might be a reasonable proxy for global atmospheric T. Don’t see how it could be worse than the current infilled, adjusted, UHI contaminated mess we have now.

She stated– “There’s this attitude of ‘I read it on the internet therefore it must be true’.” Could it be true that despite the efforts of many instructors, educators gave into the internet as education too long ago? It did start before this, however.

1) We’re talking about geologic history, not climate
2) We’re talking about the past, not the future.
3) Thank you for acknowledging your blog post is no better than climate science, due to using models.

Every historical reconstruction is an “estimate,” just what do you think the global temperature graphs are. The fact that you don’t like the Geological Record for CO2, and are silent about the “Hockeystick” pretty much proves your selective moral outrage is nothing more that phony politics. Climate “science” is totally based on models, reconstructions, and forecasts. These is no science at all supporting it if you can’t use models.

1) The output of the GEOCARB model is not the “Geological Record for CO2.”
2) Measuring the amount of CO2 in a trapped bubble in ice is not an “estimate”
3) “moral outrage” has nothing to do with geologic history
4) You divert to “climate science,” which is not the subject of our discussion.
5) There is a lot of science at all supporting it. Take for instance the physics of radiative heat transfer.

Pat Frank, you are correct, “The physics of radiative transfer is not a theory of climate.” However I suggest your re-read the comment posted by “co2islife” where he/she says: ” is totally based on models.” Do you understand the meaning of the English word “BASED?” Or do you not understand the word “SUPPORTING?”
…
PS, I also suggest you consult a physicist and see if they would agree that all kinetic energy on our planet eventually ends up as heat.

Luis Anastasia, the claim of AGW *is* totally based on models; a claim-base that includes your implicit assertion that radiation physics is a model of the climate.

The climate has a number of fast response modes, other than to just heat up. I suggest you follow your own advice and ask a physicist whether it’s clever to insist in ignorance on only one of a number of possible modes.

I long ago gave up expecting educated people to be any more rational than the rest. Decades ago, there was an ongoing exchange in the Letters to the Editor in Geotimes where a micropaleontologist, who earned his living identifying micro-fossils in well cuttings, thereby dating the rock being drilled, denied evolution. Similarly, the only difference between an average person and a Mensan is that the Mensan is better at articulating their rationalizations for their irrational behavior.

I am from California and went to college in California in the 70’s. I learned many years ago in a college physical geography course that was taught by a former Oil Company scientist about the oil off California coasts, the ocean movements, and man’s affects on the environment. What I found is that in many cases the environmentalists were causing issues that impeded corporations for having work that would save areas from environmental damage, An example is most the the coast of California has much oil naturally leaking from sea bed and the environmentalist by stopping the oil drilling has caused this to continue and stopped the oil companies from harvesting the oil without damage to the coast, and this is never reported. This is the same way with Climate Change (as it was originally Climate Warming until it did not warm), these different groups want control and money.

This is the bread and butter of the alarmist camp and inferring that this applies to the skeptical side of climate science is yet another example of psychological projection. For example, the relevance of natural variability and the many benefits of warming to man and the benefits of increased CO2 to agriculture are completely absent from the alarmist narrative. Another example is cherry picking starting and ending point to establish a ‘perpetual’ trend. Many more of these half truths can easily be identified in nearly article written by the MSM addressing climate change and in nearly every paper written about the topic.

It’s unfathomably absurd how ostensibly intelligent scientists can be so absolutely wrong about something with trillion dollar negative implications while the physics is pretty clear that they’re undeniably wrong about their unjustifiably high sensitivity. Climate science and even the scientific method has been irreparably harmed by a far left political ideology designed to support a massive redistribution of wealth under the guise of climate reparations. Even more absurd is that so many on the alarmist side are blind to the underlying motivation and succumb to the fear, especially considering that the motivation driving the UNFCCC and the IPCC is very transparent, even as it’s obfuscated with fake science.

When the history books are written centuries from now, people will look back at the foolishness and wonder how their ancestors allowed such insanity to persist for so long. Will we learn? Probably not since we didn’t learn from the political/religious interference that drove science to accept an Earth Centric Universe which draws many parallels to the flawed concepts of man centric climate change.

I don’t know why anyone would question her or the science when they trot out the “venus” scenario. Or that every hurricane will be as strong or stronger than Katrina and happen once a month. Or that the Westside Hiway in NYC should be on its way to being submerged by now. Or that there will be 10’s millions of climate refugees. Or there’s a tropospheric hotspot. Or polar bears are going extinct. etc…………

“…….Throughout her career, Stofan has highlighted the role of planetary science in understanding the Earth’s environment and said it provided some of the most inarguable proof that atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to a warmer climate. She draws parallels between carbon emissions on Earth and the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus, a planet which once had oceans but is now a toxic inferno with surface temperatures approaching 500C.

The Earth is not destined for such an extreme scenario – even if all the CO2 were burned its oceans would not boil off completely – but Venus demonstrates the dramatic changes that can unfold when the fine balance of planet’s atmosphere is tipped…….”.

I’m not a scientist, but I thought that Venus’ atmospheric pressure was some 90 times greater than Earth’s. Doesn’t that atmospheric pressure play an important role in the intense heat of Venus? Higher atmospheric pressure = higher temps, correct?

Higher pressure yields broader absorption lines. Pauli exclusion principal and all you know. If the line is twice as wide, it will absorb twice as much energy and reradiate it all things being equal. So yes, the CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus is not the “same” CO2 in our atmosphere as to its absorption effects. Of course, there is the small matter of the distance from the sun and all. At 67MM miles from the sun, Venus gets about 1.9 times the energy from the sun that the earth does. Granted that the T^4 aspect of the blackbody equation means that the temperature only increases by about 18% when you measure in Kelvin, but outside of a sauna for a short period I have not found 60 degrees C very comfortable either.

It’s temperature is solved identically to any other gas. There’s no difference, it’s why Hansen and everyone else associated with the scam don’t want to talk about Venus except in passing, because if you check, all their lies about Venus being anything but COOLER watt for watt and molecule for molecule.

Venus’ temperature is a few degrees cooler than the earth’s atmosphere would be at that pressure and light level.

There’s no proof whatsoever that Venus ever had an ocean, unless the ocean you’re talking about is the supercritical fluid CO2 ocean that’s still present. The solid surface of Venus is hot because it’s not the surface of the planet that’s in direct equilibrium with the Sun. This surface is the top of its clouds at the top of its atmosphere. Once the temperature of this surface is established, the PVT profile of the atmosphere below dictates the required surface temperature. For both Venus and Earth, the lapse rate starts at the surface in equilibrium with the Sun. On Earth this is negative from the bottom of the atmosphere up while on Venus it’s positive from the top of the atmosphere down.

Note that the mass of the Venusian atmosphere is the same order of magnitude as the mass of Earth’s oceans and the Venusian atmosphere acts more like an Earth ocean, than like the Earth’s atmosphere.

Note too that the solid surface of Earth is also not in direct equilibrium with the Sun. This surface is the top of the oceans and the bits of land that poke through. Like the solid surface of Venus, the solid surface of Earth beneath the oceans has no diurnal or seasonal variability and its temperature is dictated by the density/temperature profile of the ocean above.

Another attempt to grab media outlet attention, and spew falsehood about it being possible for Carbon Dioxide to warm atmospheric air, after she and her politics orientated friends installed a generational dark-age regarding atmospheric physics for years?

She’s angry and she’s filled with the kind of venom that comes from an exposed, debunked, cancer on scientific credibility. The people of N.A.S.A. who knew the original men responsible for all this, said repeatedly that their work would become just that, and destroy peoples’ faith in science.

Unfortunately her “mandatory” blame oil and other rhetoric leaves on to believe she was not a working scientist but another political appointee that does not practice science but the agenda of the far left. This was a political comment without any substance to judge her blame game.

Meanwhile the International Energy Agency has just admitted that Obama’s program for clean renewable fuels to replace Fossil Fuels has been a total failure:
” Nearly every country in the world has committed to take action under the Paris Agreement to slow global warming. But only 3 out of 26 technology categories tracked by the IEA are on pace to help do that, the agency concluded in this year’s Energy Technology Perspectives report.”
Although the CNBC reports is blaming Trump for reducing the funding for this effort. and still pretends that throwing more money at the problem will work, but Science does not work that way and there are uncomfortable laws of Thermodynamics, Physics, and Chemistry that prove otherwise.

Any honest individual knowledgeable of energy knows that the Obama program had no clue on funding viable projects, just push the $$$ out the door and fund “friends” .
In reality there is currently no promising energy source to replace fossil fuels in the horizon that can come on in decades, especially if we rule out Nuclear. Replacement of transportation fuels has been particularly elusive.
Green energy plans like those planned for California cannot be implemented without major disruption to the economy and the good life we currently enjoy. Unfortunately many politicians and the MSM is ignorant of these facts and I am disappointed that the Engineering and Science communities fail to speak up..National Academies are a joke.

I will never understand articles like this. Just about every day, you can find newspaper articles which include quotes by “climate scientists” that are obvious distortions of the science. This is why they lack credibility.

You can agree all day long that Carbon Dioxide increases the temperature, but that doesn’t make the increase harmful. Every time I read the phrase “as much as … ” or “some scientists believe…”, it activates my BS meter. The scientists are their own worst enemy when it comes to exaggerated quotes in the press.

Based on the paleoclimate record and modeling results one can only conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control..It is all a matter of science.

There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have cuased at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. It is all a matter of science.

The AGW conjecture cannot be defended because the conjecture is just too full of holes. The largest is that the radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture depends, has not been observed anywhere in the solar system including the Earth. The radiant greenhouse effect is scidnce fiction as must be the AGW conjecture. It is all a matter of science. What the former chief scientists really needs to do is to study the associated science and not just the partial science upon which the AGW conjecture is based.

“There’s this attitude of ‘I read it on the internet therefore it must be true’.”

OK, NASA, here’s some things I read on the internet, from your website. I think they are true, not because they were accessed so easily by clicking, but that they are readily confirmed by honest observation and sound reasoning. These quotations are taken from the web article “Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget” by Rebecca Lindsey, January 14, 2009.

“The climate’s heat engine must not only redistribute solar heat from the equator toward the poles, but also from the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere back to space.”

Right. A good example of a localized heat engine is a thunderstorm. It turns heat energy into motion, at impressive power per unit area.

“At an altitude of roughly 5-6 kilometers, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the overlying atmosphere is so small that heat can radiate freely to space.”

Right. The absorption of outgoing longwave radiation by the overlying atmosphere diminishes with altitude. Pretty obvious when you think about it.

“The atmosphere radiates heat equivalent to 59 percent of incoming sunlight; the surface radiates only 12 percent. In other words, most solar heating happens at the surface, while most radiative cooling happens in the atmosphere.”

Right. Therefore the working fluid of the heat engine absorbs heat more readily down low with the help of CO2. The heat engine works just fine to deliver heat upward, perhaps to a slightly higher altitude, or perhaps by an increased number rather than increased severity of strong convective events.

I keep going back to this article in my comments from time to time here at WUWT, because it is so clear to me that the basic operation of the atmosphere is described much more accurately as a heat engine than as a radiative insulating blanket. When one grasps that concept, and pulls on the loose threads of the catastrophic global warming talking points, the entire narrative unravels. I realize that the full article mentions the warming trend, “greenhouse gases” and all that, but I find it interesting that in the 8 years of the administration that took office a week after this article was posted, no one took this article down. It is still there on the internet. I don’t think they understood that these gems of accurate science were so available to anyone who wished to know.

NASA, as an institution, knows (or knew) perfectly well how the atmosphere works. I expect it is on a better track politically now.

It’s the same old lame excuses and allegations from someone on the losing side of a debate. They had everything on their side: the money, support and encouragement of government, the media, the scientific establishment, the advantage of striking their blows first… everything….and still couldn’t make their case stick, because their alarmist argument is not actually supported by the less than alarming facts.

So the fall-back is the same old vague allegations about persons unnamed using money unnamed influencing other persons unnamed with vague plots and devices. Not even any detailed allegations to be rebutted, just the same old ‘big oil’ type argument.
I am never sure whether to be as angry as she claims to be, or just bored by political activism that cannot even be bothered to invent new excuses as to why the world isn’t buying their tired story any more.

Americans are indeed “‘under siege’ from climate disinformation,” but the disinformation is purveyed by incompetent scientists whose number apparently includes Ellen Stofan, who can’t tell accuracy from precision.

Earth to Ellen: the annual average greenhouse perturbation is 0.035 W/m^2/year. The lower limit of model resolution for the tropospheric thermal energy flux is ±4 W/m^2/year; 114x larger.

Ellen’s science can resolve a perturbation 114x smaller than the lower limit of model resolution. How about it, Ellen: is it equivocal, or not, to claim certainty about something you can’t detect?

“The science being unequivocal,” is that there is unequivocally no scientific case at all for CO2-induced warming.

Despite what they may print in the headlines, the diversity of opinions within NASA about the science of climate change generally mirrors the population as a whole. Views diverging from the politically approved narrative are often publicly suppressed to create the illusion of a single “NASA” position on the subject. One item of note that may not be generally understood by the public is that in NASA, the word ‘Chief’ is used to denote a position that in practice is typically more managerial than technical in nature.

Ms. Merkel, however, sounded a somewhat bleaker note. “The whole discussion about climate was very difficult, not to say unsatisfactory,” she said. “There’s a situation where it’s six, if you count the European Union, seven, against one.”

“This is not just any old agreement, but it is a central agreement for shaping globalization,” she said. “There are no signs of whether the U.S. will stay in the Paris accords or not.”

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

Can someone please point out the powerful and incredibly effective disinformation campaigns that oil and coal companies have been accused of producing for the last several decades. Warmests keep referring to them, but I can’t find any evidence of them. They are harder to find than evidence that CO2 has a powerful impact on atmospheric temperature!

I became a skeptic by reading the papers published by the warmests! Their science was weak and their arguments appeared to be practices of hyperbole. I don’t need any outside source to convince me that the AGW crisis folks are somewhat delusional. I just needed a little knowledge in atmospheric science, some rational thinking and the patience to actually read what they were publishing.

“…CO2 is currently growing at around 3ppm / year,…”, …that is only due to the recent El Nino. What a stupid assumption to think that CO2 will increase 3 ppm every year from now. The year 2014 was only a 2 ppm increase. Prior to that you have to look back to 1998 (super El Nino) to find a 2.8 ppm increase. So by what magic will CO2 now increase by 3 ppm/yr?

If I had used less than 3ppm / year someone would have popped up and complained my CO2 estimate was unrealistically low. By going with 3ppm / year and 1.5C (rather than 1C, which I also considered), I demonstrate that even with a few home field advantages, CO2 is a big nothing burger.

Instead of taking a cautious approach, they launched directly into insisting that co2 was causing catastrophic global warming. The ideology quickly outpaced the evidence but they chose to purge dissent rather than tolerate contrary views.

Now they are stuck trying to sell the general public on their claims, without solid proof to support many of their major assertions. It ends up sounding like a wild conspiracy theory, where they jump from A to B to Z and you just have to take their word that all the dots connect in the way they describe.

The problem is that they can’t purge dissent in the general public to make it go away like they did in their own circles. As time passes and the world doesn’t collapse into the rising sea and polar bears don’t go extinct and the natural variability of the climate and weather defy simple explanations, their window of opportunity is closing. They are clearly getting more shrill over time, which i think is due to nervousness that their house of cards could collapse.

I get a real kick out of this huge amount of debating about whether there is global warming and whether it is man-made. The back and forth must really be fun, since there is so much of it. But nearly all miss the 8 million pound gorilla sitting right next to them in the room. The Liberals have absolutely no solutions that have any more than a minuscule impact on CO2, and yet they have gargantuan costs in terms of increased taxes, choking regulations, and negative impact on the economy. If you go through the real math, it will verify my contention.
For example, Obama’s attack on coal will have at best a 1% or 2% impact on worldwide greenhouse gases by 2030, if it goes perfectly, which it most probably will not. And other developing countries will negate that small gain in just a few years. Yet it cost tens of thousands of jobs, and put a bunch of people on welfare. For another example, wind and solar in the US were at around 2% of our total energy needs when Obama took over, and after hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at it, they now are a little over 4%. What about the other 96%? Hello! Can any of you so called scientists out there count above 10 without taking off your shoes!?
I can show you the same sort of math with just about any proposed Liberal “solution”. Apparently Liberals have absolutely no appreciation for the concept of Return on Investment. And, the only real clean energy source, nuclear energy, is loathed by the warmed over 60’s hippie Liberals. Obama said he supported it, and then shut down Yucca mountain.
But, the Liberals say, “We have got to do something, don’t we?” The answer is NO, if the something has huge costs and near-zero impact on global greenhouse gases.
I often tell my Liberal friends that, if they have an irresistible urge to do something, go mow their lawn. They respond that I must be crazy. I then tell them that mowing their lawn will have about the same impact on global greenhouse gases as their so-called solutions, but it will cost far less. Who, then is crazy?
If CO2 is the huge problem for the world that the alarmists say, then the whole world should get together and develop giant CO2 capture machines, and then find a way to store the CO2 they capture. From a realistic viewpoint, that will happen just after the UN finds a way to prevent any future wars!
I am not opposed to finding and implementing clean energy sources. I AM opposed to blindly pursuing “solutions” that have near-zero impact and yet have gargantuan costs. And, I am opposed to solutions where the US and a few European countries bear most of the financial burden, even making reparations payments to developing countries, while the rest of the world is let off the hook. If you think about this last statement, there may be a clue about what is really going on with the Liberals. The word “Globalism” comes to mind!

If one looks to Canada, one may wonder if there really is a “climate issue”, or is this all just a huge scam to redistribute the wealth in an upwards direction. The PM of Canada and Premier of Ontario are both all about “saving the environment” with carbon taxes, carbon pricing and cap and trade. Let’s look at cap and trade first. In Ontario, the 100 largest emitters will get a free pass while the average hydro rate payer gets their bills doubled, tripled and in some cases quadrupled because of environmental taxes and fees. The Premier is also bull dogging through a project called the “Ring of Fire”. This will be a MASSIVE mining project and highly carbon intensive as almost all mining is. But apparently with all kinds of carbon taxes, pricing and fees, those emissions will become inert. The Premier has also decided to take advantage of global warming by approving the destruction of thousands of hectares of northern forest for farmland for cattle to continue feeding the incredibly wasteful fast food industry.
Then there’s the Prime Minister, Justin “super Dupe” Trudeau. He’s so concerned about global warming that he approved two pipelines. In BC, there’s a fight over a hydroelectric project called the Site C dam. Since this is a new project the destruction of more forest and farmland is inevitable. But here’s the kicker, 60% of the power generated by Site C if/when it gets built, will be going to supply the gas fields in northern BC which helps supply the oil fields in Alberta with both energy and a means to retrieve the oil from the oil sands.
Doesn’t really sound like a govt that’s all that serious about climate change and reducing CO2. And that’s where the last problem comes in. Again, back in Ontario, we are phasing out carbon emissions created by power generation and replacing it with wind power. The problem here is wind power requires MW for MW back up generation. If you don’t have the geography for decent hydroelectric generation and wet your panties over nuclear power, then your only other option is fossil fuels. In Ontario, the fossil fuel of choice is natgas. The irony is, Ontario’s hydroelectric and nuclear power generation make up the bulk of Ontario’s generating capacity yet most of that is being exported while Ontarians get to pay for the far more expensive “green” energy from wind and solar, two power sources that are utterly needless in Ontario. As a result, what Ontario has essentially done is eliminate coal fired power plants and replaced all those nasty CO2 emissions with natags which is almost pure methane, a GHG 20x more potent than CO2. If you look deep enough, you’ll find that the big push for renewables is coming from the oil and gas industry. If that sounds a little counter-intuitive to you, leave a response and I’ll happily explain why it isn’t.

Despite the very obvious “dumb blonde” inspirations in the article, in my advancing years I’m finding such to be as offensive as racist jokes. The term “climatologist” captures the essence and context quite nicely, though…..

“Fake news is so harmful because once people take on a concept it’s very hard to dislodge it.” The problem is, Ms. Stofan, no REAL science to support AGW. You have a bunch of theories that are feed into a computer which spits out draconian consequences. That is NOT SCIENCE? That is harmful to the truth and to the integrity of science. Stop pretending you have proved your case.

I really enjoyed this lecture from Eric Worral. Of course, he must be right because, as Ellen Stofen points out ”it is written on the Internet, so it must be true”. So, if i summarize:
– Eric is right when he states that, I quote, ”The science is NOT unequivocal that we face a climate emergency”. Indeed 97% of the scientist (not all of them writing on the internet) assessing that human-generated CO2 will have an impact on our planet are either wrong (they can’t do decent calculation) or they have other reasons to be exceedingly alarmist. Thank you Eric for having enlightened me on this.
– We can fearlessly go ahead to open new fossil-fuel based power plants in US (and in the rest of the world) because anyway we will get 0.8 degrees by 2100.
– In 2100, I quote from Eric, ” ..humanity will know whether CO2 is causing climate problems..”. So, if for any reason Eric is wrong today, I will be long dead by that time and if my children and grand-children will have problems, I quote again, ”frankly that is their problem”.
The only thing I miss to understand from this nice article is that, by keeping on building coal plants up to Dec 31st 2100, where Eric is sourcis all this confidence that we will surely get, I quote again, ”the energy supply options and advanced engineering capabilities to deal with any eventuality” on Jan 1st 2101? If they will discover that we were wrong, I can only see two possibilities:
1 – US will have to import clean energy from other countries that decided to continue such research, so US will lose energy independence
2 – the world will be at such an irreversible point that we might prefer to emigrate on Venus that, as I discover from other illuminated posts, at that time someone will be surely considering as a viable plan B for Earth. After all, it written on the Internet
No reason to be alarmed, then. Thank you Eric.

And yet another spewer of the lies of the religion of Human Caused Globall Warmining toddles through, filled with the glow of Self Righteous Sanctimony. Show us how great your concern for Mother Gaia is! Stop benefiting from Evil coal and gas and hydro and nuclear generated electricity. Refuse to eat the food grown with Evil chemicals and transported with Evil gasoline and diesel. Be a man, show us the courage of your convictions.

Well personally I can imagine lots of possibilities with lots of ‘ifs’ but I usually retire to bed if the thought processes are running amok like that occasionally. You don’t want to overdo these things at my age and staying off psychotropic drugs is a handy tip too, having been a child of the sixties and early seventies.

If the science was so unequivocal the alarmist scientists would have the answer. Any scientist to be alarmist has alarm bells ringing with such uncertainty relying only on models. The whole practice stinks and questions their professional competence of being an actual scientist in the first place.

The science that is supposed to be unequivocal is never mentioned by the persons claiming it to be so because they are avoiding science and ranting instead. I have never read so many half-truths from alarmist scientists in recent decades than anybody else in science. What is it with these alarmists people claiming others do what they actually do, but thinking they actually don’t? This is why you are losing the scientific debate because you won’t debate it and can’t defend your alarmist nonsense.